Search form

Reviews Round-up

Around India in 80 Trains by Monisha Rajesh

In Andrew Duff’s review in the Telegraph, he praises Around India in 80 Trains by Monisha Rajesh for its “witty and insightful traveller’s-eye view of the country from inside its railway network”. Rajesh appears to have avoided falling into the trap of boring the reader with a tedious travel memoir by exploring India geographically as well as culturally: Rajesh criss-crosses Induan Rail’s “geographical diamond”, experiencing all its freedoms and frustrations while enduring endless inquiries as to her marital status.”

Time Out Mumbai, while praising, is also more critical of the book. Their reviewer Karishma Attar begins with the damning claim that India’s image as “exotic and dangerous” hasn’t changed with this new travelogue. “The novelty and satiric richness run out quickly for the experienced Indian traveller. Dry humour doesn’t quite take the sting out of travel Indian-isms, which Rajesh lists with unerring steadfastness...” Attar does point out the text’s “witty, dry, first-person account” but adds: “This is a journey rife with 'shocks' that comes as no surprise.”

Makers: The New Industrial Revolution by Chris Anderson

Chris Anderson’s Makers: The New Industrial Revolution may be optimistic but the Guardian’s Steven Poole is not convinced. He criticises the American editor-in-chief of Wired’s “techno-economic utopia [which] looks curiously scrambled”. Poole goes on to add that “[f]ew techno-utopias are as confusing as this one. In Anderson's brave new world, everyone is a creative-geek tinkerer but no one does the boring stuff”.

In contrast, Michael Roth’s review on the Huffington Post and in the Washington Post is more complimentary. “Anderson is an excellent guide to companies that make niche products for an international market ... [and] a good storyteller,” according to Roth. According to Roth, Anderson is “an indefatigable cheerleader for the unlimited potential of the digital economy”. Likewise, Oliver Franklin in GQenjoys the “fascinating characters” featured in the book from “Will Chapman, a Washington-based designer 3D printing Lego kits, to Neil Gershenfeld, an MIT professor”.

Murder at Wrotham Hill by Diana Souhami

Diana Souham’s previous book, Edith Cavell, told the story of the eponymous nurse who was shot for smuggling allied soldiers out of Belgium during the First World War. In her latest offering, Murder at Wrotham Hill, we are transported to post-war Kent and the murder of “gentle eccentric spinster” Dagmar Petrzywalski.

Critics are unanimous in their view that Souhami’s book evokes a detailed picture of postwar austerity Britain. TheGuardian’s Blake Morrison writes “both the murderer and murderee were classic products of the age”. He observes the author’s use of “zeitgeisty minutiae”, which is not always effective: “[It] is enriching, at worst distracting.”

But whilst Morrison “isn’t entirely clear” as to why Souhami chooses to write about the “model citizen of austerity Britain”, Jenny Diski in the London Review of Books admires the “great clairity and attention” with which Souhami evokes the postwar period.

Sinclair McKay of the Telegraph, whilst also reading the work historically, praises it for transcending cultural emphera: “Both killer and victim stood at an angle to society, and the strangeness of their stories resonates deeply in another way, leading one to meditate on ideas of malevolent fate and evil.” He is full of praise for Souhami’s writing which he describes as “too clever to allow any neatness”, evoking the “cruel and bewildering randomness” of the murder in question.

Leader: The unresolved Eurozone crisis

The eurozone crisis was never resolved. It was merely conveniently forgotten. The vote for Brexit, the terrible war in Syria and Donald Trump’s election as US president all distracted from the single currency’s woes. Yet its contradictions endure, a permanent threat to continental European stability and the future cohesion of the European Union.

The resignation of the Italian prime minister Matteo Renzi, following defeat in a constitutional referendum on 4 December, was the moment at which some believed that Europe would be overwhelmed. Among the champions of the No campaign were the anti-euro Five Star Movement (which has led in some recent opinion polls) and the separatist Lega Nord. Opponents of the EU, such as Nigel Farage, hailed the result as a rejection of the single currency.

An Italian exit, if not unthinkable, is far from inevitable, however. The No campaign comprised not only Eurosceptics but pro-Europeans such as the former prime minister Mario Monti and members of Mr Renzi’s liberal-centrist Democratic Party. Few voters treated the referendum as a judgement on the monetary union.

To achieve withdrawal from the euro, the populist Five Star Movement would need first to form a government (no easy task under Italy’s complex multiparty system), then amend the constitution to allow a public vote on Italy’s membership of the currency. Opinion polls continue to show a majority opposed to the return of the lira.

But Europe faces far more immediate dangers. Italy’s fragile banking system has been imperilled by the referendum result and the accompanying fall in investor confidence. In the absence of state aid, the Banca Monte dei Paschi di Siena, the world’s oldest bank, could soon face ruin. Italy’s national debt stands at 132 per cent of GDP, severely limiting its firepower, and its financial sector has amassed $360bn of bad loans. The risk is of a new financial crisis that spreads across the eurozone.

EU leaders’ record to date does not encourage optimism. Seven years after the Greek crisis began, the German government is continuing to advocate the failed path of austerity. On 4 December, Germany’s finance minister, Wolfgang Schäuble, declared that Greece must choose between unpopular “structural reforms” (a euphemism for austerity) or withdrawal from the euro. He insisted that debt relief “would not help” the immiserated country.

Yet the argument that austerity is unsustainable is now heard far beyond the Syriza government. The International Monetary Fund is among those that have demanded “unconditional” debt relief. Under the current bailout terms, Greece’s interest payments on its debt (roughly €330bn) will continually rise, consuming 60 per cent of its budget by 2060. The IMF has rightly proposed an extended repayment period and a fixed interest rate of 1.5 per cent. Faced with German intransigence, it is refusing to provide further funding.

Ever since the European Central Bank president, Mario Draghi, declared in 2012 that he was prepared to do “whatever it takes” to preserve the single currency, EU member states have relied on monetary policy to contain the crisis. This complacent approach could unravel. From the euro’s inception, economists have warned of the dangers of a monetary union that is unmatched by fiscal and political union. The UK, partly for these reasons, wisely rejected membership, but other states have been condemned to stagnation. As Felix Martin writes on page 15, “Italy today is worse off than it was not just in 2007, but in 1997. National output per head has stagnated for 20 years – an astonishing . . . statistic.”

Germany’s refusal to support demand (having benefited from a fixed exchange rate) undermined the principles of European solidarity and shared prosperity. German unemployment has fallen to 4.1 per cent, the lowest level since 1981, but joblessness is at 23.4 per cent in Greece, 19 per cent in Spain and 11.6 per cent in Italy. The youngest have suffered most. Youth unemployment is 46.5 per cent in Greece, 42.6 per cent in Spain and 36.4 per cent in Italy. No social model should tolerate such waste.

“If the euro fails, then Europe fails,” the German chancellor, Angela Merkel, has often asserted. Yet it does not follow that Europe will succeed if the euro survives. The continent that once aspired to be a rival superpower to the US is now a byword for decline, and ethnic nationalism and right-wing populism are thriving. In these circumstances, the surprise has been not voters’ intemperance, but their patience.